Always Something To Learn

My son was very small once (ages and ages ago, it seems) and during that five minutes or so that he was tiny he didn't sleep much at all and certainly not while he was alone or uncuddled. I was mostly fine with that, but there wasn't much to do while maintaining bodily contact to increase the possibility of a non-cranky baby.

Joe started a blog during that time, keeping me company while he surfed the internet and began to figure out that he could express his writer's gene that way in an electric medium. I thought, "Hey, if he's doing it, why can't I?" Of course, I sucked at it. I think all of those old posts have long since been deleted, for which I am very grateful.

Lives and children grow and evolve. Joe is now the creator of no less than three blogs, none of which he posts to because he has also started an online pop culture ezine. Pop Culture Zoo is the actuation of a life spent collecting knowledge about the TV, Movie and Comic book industry and turning it into amazing interviews, editorials, reviews and general press articles. He scoops people all the time, which amazes the heck out of me, because I don't have the foggiest idea where to look for any of that stuff, ever.

I am also the author of several blogs, including this one that I started because I wanted to take part in the general push toward every knitter having a blog. Aspire To Knit is the only one that I keep up on, but I have fallen into a familiar pattern yet again. I like to rant, kvetch and editorialize wise about other people's failings, what they're doing to piss me off this week, and what might generally be wrong with the world. And you know what? It kind of makes me ill.

It isn't that I tend toward negative thoughts all the time, but more that I'm weak in accepting an assumed anonymity only the internet can create the illusion of providing. And I know from experience how small the hints have to be in order for one person to make a connection between unprofessional vitriol and the identity of the person being spewed about. I was approached at Sock Summit by a blog-reader of a another dyer who had taken me to town about something-or-other. I had never met the approacher in person and the blogger only once. Its a darn small world out there, and there is no such thing as anonymity.

The really unfortunate mixer that winds up happening is that I rant in one post, and then talk about my business in the next. As a customer, I think that would make me really uncomfortable and I would probably tend to go elsewhere. This is not what I want, for my business, or for peoples' perceptions of me.

To this end, I am contemplating an end to blogging for the time being. I have never been faithful to this particular medium, whereas Twitter really makes more sense to me and so I utilize is regularly. Ravelry works for me, Facebook is at least mildly interesting, and if I really want to get my writing wiggles out about something worth reading, Joe is kind enough to let me do interviews and write book reviews for his site. I've even begun work on a new book column for PCZ, called "Ex Post Facto", that only really needs a logo and some editing of the rough-draft-in-my-head of my take on Twilight.

I will still post, but from now on it will have to be about either knitting or Black Trillium Fibre Studio goings-on. And eventually this might be a place I can post pattern PDF's. No promises, no expectations. Just what the witch doctor ordered.